I'm teaching in Korea at the moment and already hold the CELTA. However, Korean school managers, owners and professors don't really value the CELTA. This is likely partly because they don't know what it is.

I'm considering enrolling in the DELTA to bolster my qualifications but would like to know if school managers and search committees or HR personnel value the CELTA and DELTA. I ask with the possibility of looking for a teaching position in the UAE once I've completed the DELTA.

What are your qualifications (i.e., education and specific experience)? Also, do you hope to teach k-12 or at the university level? If the latter, a DELTA may not suffice; most positions in the UAE, and the Gulf in general, are hard to come by if you don't have an MA. And as VS stated in her other post, employers in this region especially like to see experience teaching academic English with an emphasis on reading and writing.

For teaching in K-12 positions (elementary and high school) it is hard to find work from outside of the country if you are not a registered teacher.

However, I found decent work with a CELTA, BA in philosophy and 9 years teaching experience in Taiwan. Might have been a fluke?

Working at a university requires an MA - and the influence of the DELTA is not really well known on this website.

Whether a DELTA is equivalent or not (or as another poster on another part of this website amusingly said "It's equal to but not equivalent") the fact remains that a MA is more well known.

So my decision is to do both. I will do a distance MA that assimilates some of the credit from my DELTA, the DELTA is modulised now so I will choose a module that focuses on writing and if I have the choice in my MA I will focus on doing some research on why Arab high school graduates are crap at writing.

Module 1 is an external exam.
Module 2 is an 8 week face to face course which includes about 12000 words of essays and almost as many in your lesson planning.
Module 3 is an extensive research course that must be run over a minimum of 6 months - you choose the area of study. The word limit is 5000 (didn't sound like much to me) but I have since been told by people who did this module first that the appendixes can blow out to 20,000 to 30,000 words.

You have 2 options for module 2 - the intensive course full time for 8 weeks or part time for, I think, more like 9 months.

Most of the people in our current module 2 are doing this part of the course first. We are doing ours in Barcelona.

Module 1 is an external exam.
Module 2 is an 8 week face to face course which includes about 12000 words of essays and almost as many in your lesson planning.
Module 3 is an extensive research course that must be run over a minimum of 6 months - you choose the area of study. The word limit is 5000 (didn't sound like much to me) but I have since been told by people who did this module first that the appendixes can blow out to 20,000 to 30,000 words.

You have 2 options for module 2 - the intensive course full time for 8 weeks or part time for, I think, more like 9 months.

Most of the people in our current module 2 are doing this part of the course first. We are doing ours in Barcelona.

The DELTA is also offered wholly online, as well, through a number of schools all vetted by Cambridge (obviously). IH London is one of the more popular schools through which to do it, though M2 through them takes a very long time (about nine months) and requires a two-week, onsite orientation. A few other schools offer it without the orientation, which is great since it is by far the most expensive module and adding flights and two weeks' food and lodging on top of it doesn't help. Through those schools M2 is roughly the same price (though a bit cheaper at at least one of the schools) and more intensive (and over in 12 weeks).

I have done M1 and M3 this way and will do M2 from September to December. My M3 final assignment was huge and the course took three and a half months, not six. The M1 exam is wild but doable, especially with feedback from course tutors.

Also remember that since the DELTA is modular, you no longer need to do the whole thing; each module is certified. Of course you may want to do the whole thing eventually (and can do the whole thing at once in a blended program), but this means you can do the modules as you need/want to. I did M3 first, then M1.

If anyone wants info about doing the DELTA this way, feel free to PM me

My M3 final assignment was huge and the course took three and a half months, not six.

Thanks, I didn't know that! How many words did your assignment get up to?

Hmmm...I'm not sure. My final assignment is on my computer at work (and on a stick around here somewhere ) and I'm on holiday until September. If I find it before then I'll let you know; otherwise I'll tell you then

I do remember the word count for the essay being slightly over 5,000 words (there's a grace of a few hundred words I believe), but my final submission was *several* pages long with all of the appendices. I can't remember how many pages - I did it early last year - but it was a lot, certainly over 20.

Hmmm...I'm not sure. My final assignment is on my computer at work (and on a stick around here somewhere ) and I'm on holiday until September. If I find it before then I'll let you know; otherwise I'll tell you then

I do remember the word count for the essay being slightly over 5,000 words (there's a grace of a few hundred words I believe), but my final submission was *several* pages long with all of the appendices. I can't remember how many pages - I did it early last year - but it was a lot, certainly over 20.

Are you doing M3 now, or...?

~smedini

Thanks - I would be interested to know how long your essay was, actually I was quite pleased to learn that the word count was higher - it seems to add some weight and heft to the whole qualification.

I´m in week 6 of Module 2 (face to face, intensive 8 weeks)... it´s all very frenetic but I´m learning loads and I´m convinced this is the best way for me... get it over with rather than drag it out over 9 months!!!

Thanks - I would be interested to know how long your essay was, actually I was quite pleased to learn that the word count was higher - it seems to add some weight and heft to the whole qualification.

I´m in week 6 of Module 2 (face to face, intensive 8 weeks)... it´s all very frenetic but I´m learning loads and I´m convinced this is the best way for me... get it over with rather than drag it out over 9 months!!!

Nice! I, too, think 9 months is a bit too long, especially since 8-12 weeks seems to be the norm with everyone else. I'm really looking forward to finishing with the whole qualification; it's been a tremendous experience so far and I've seen the difference in the classroom. I have an MA already and though there has been some overlap, it's more complementary than anything else.

Nice! I, too, think 9 months is a bit too long, especially since 8-12 weeks seems to be the norm with everyone else. I'm really looking forward to finishing with the whole qualification; it's been a tremendous experience so far and I've seen the difference in the classroom. I have an MA already and though there has been some overlap, it's more complementary than anything else.

Are you planning to do another module soon?

~smedini

After all the debate about DELTA vs MA it's great to hear someone with both say what I've been suspecting all along... they are best seen as being complimentary.

My impression of an MA is that it delves deeply into one area of TEFL research and may or may not include a practicum aspect. By doing the MA the student improves their data collection and display - and can really get into the nitty gritty of whichever area they are focusing on. It also has the advantage of being instantly recognizable by any employer anywhere in the world.

DELTA, on the other hand, seems to have a similar word count in terms of how much a student must write for it, but those come in the form of short 2500 word essays and similar sized essay plans. So it has a broader focus and all of the theory relates directly to the teaching that goes in the classroom. That's the best part of the course for me, being able to learn the theory, and turn around and apply it in the classroom immediately.

What do you think of this summation of the two? I guess the other factor is that MA can vary in format and content a great deal, whereas DELTA is pretty much the same from place to place?

I'm going to do the Module 1 in December (so studying from now until then I guess) and then do the Module 3 in 2013... not sure the date? Maybe June? By that stage I should be able to get into a final year high school class at my school in the UAE, and use them to get the information I need...

I'm not really sure of the format of Module 3, how did you go about yours?